life(dot)next

Late last night my husband and I drove across downtown Los Angeles. It was dark and sparkly, the freeways were nearly empty (near midnight on a Sunday). As wastelanders, that (even temporary) urban desolation feels comfy and familiar. Tiny lights dotting large expanses of glossy black: roads, palm trunks, shoreline.

People ask if we’re glad we moved out here. We can’t imagine having made a different decision. But one part still feels sharp and sticky. A splinter, a burr. Leaving our tight-knit community behind (geographically at least) at best makes us maudlin, at the worst moments, miserably heartsick.

One of my brothers has an unparalleled pied-piper quality to his personality. He moves and crowds move with him, quite literally. I am invoking that (hopefully genetic) trait when I ask my female cohort to come to Cali early next year:

http://lifedotnext.bigcartel.com/

That’s all. Just come. Permanently or otherwise.

Lately I feel plagued by a group of co-workers. I’ve been letting them get on my last nerve.

One of the biggest nerve-pinching things they say over and over and over is “I’m so busy!” “I’m too busy!” “I’m just so busy!” “I’m too busy!” ad infinitum.

Two reasons why I hate this so much:

1.) If you are too busy, something is broken or not right. Something in your process, in your expectations, in your head. (I’ve said this to their faces, I get blank stares).

2.) “Busy” is a concept. It is a narrative you tell yourself over and over until you believe it.

I see these coworkers every day. They are not too busy for long lunches and potlucks and lengthy conversations and meetings and blah blah blah.

Busy is just the thing we always tell ourselves we are. I hate it! And I don’t want to be guilty of it either.

Via Cup of Jo today, I found this WSJ article, which was great.

“Change your language. Instead of saying “I don’t have time” try saying “it’s not a priority,” and see how that feels. Often, that’s a perfectly adequate explanation. I have time to iron my sheets, I just don’t want to. But other things are harder. Try it: “I’m not going to edit your résumé, sweetie, because it’s not a priority.” “I don’t go to the doctor because my health is not a priority.” If these phrases don’t sit well, that’s the point. Changing our language reminds us that time is a choice. If we don’t like how we’re spending an hour, we can choose differently.”

http://tiny.cc/GJLf2b

Bad Habits
Last night I fell down the Facebook hole. Sometimes it can’t be avoided. What I am calling “the Facebook hole” entails me either a.) feeling sorry for myself or b.) a little bit begrudging past acquaintances their successes (especially if the people didn’t really like me, cue a certain Smiths song here). This hasn’t happened in a long time – meaning I don’t typically fall into these negative mindsets very often where I’m doing a point-by-point comparison of my life to theirs (professionally, artistically, etc). But then I fall off the wagon and I don’t know why.

Motivation
Yesterday it seemed more about me wishing I had more motivation and willpower. Wishing I felt compelled to create every day. Wishing I didn’t feel so lazy unaccomplished or undisciplined. Without routine, without clear vision. I wonder if I haven’t discovered my medium yet — the practice or tool that is going to feel so natural and intuitive to me that all uncertainty falls by the wayside. Then I become a creative machine.

But as it stands, I can rattle off quite a list of things I’m fairly competent at, and I’m a master of none.

Someone’s inspirational pin said “The work you do while you procrastinate is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life.” Can I even answer “what is the work I do while I procrastinate?”

looking at pretty things

half-starting poems

talking to people

reading

looking around dumbfounded

How can I complete or commit or do justice to the many creative impulses I have on a daily basis?

What. Do. I. Need?
A coach? More sleep, more sex, more exercise? A religion, a practice, drugs? Hey, I can swing along, better than average, smarter than average, and get by just fine. But it isn’t exceptional. I want to be exceptional for myself.

The City
I wish I could hurry up and know the people here around me who’d be jazzing me up, engaging me, challenging me, conversing with me. That kind of community exerts just the right kind of pressure on my psyche that keeps me going and focused on the ideas I’m working on bringing into the world. (read: the consummate extrovert).

I think I might love Los Angeles. I love feeling overwhelmed by Los Angeles. Overwhelmed in the way that one couldn’t possibly know all the richness and depth of the people and ideas being traded within a particular geographic area. You step into that river – anywhere in the city- and the current hits you. And there’s way too much to ever feel bad about missing any of it. LA is like one infinite (and very sunny) choose your own adventure book that is just waiting for you to reread and reread it. And it time it just keeps getting better: the laughter, the billboards, the people watching, the unicorns shitting rainbows over Santa Monica pier.

So it’s been a shameful six months since I’ve posted. Shameful only in the sense that I’d always intended to write more up here and that guilt kicks in when I think about lost opportunity.

But in that intervening time I’ve made good on a couple of life-list items. The most dramatic of which was moving my self and family to the west coast. The irony is that I’m now so far away (physically) from all of you wonderful women who supported and coached me through my job search and decision to move out to Los Angeles. Now nestled in Westwood, it seems like I need to rebuild my life-list from scratch. The frame of where I live and work now is so drastically different than central Ohio, it may as well be another country. Even the culture of higher ed feels less familiar.

Are any of you working on your life-lists? Fall for me has always been an ecstatically busy time- where some genetic alarm goes off that sets me into a motivated scurry to begin projects, reconnect with old friends, experiment, frolic, enjoy the last blips of warm weather. What’s on your list? When should we meet again?

Bear with me as I try to explain, but right now I’m all about living the trajectory from impossible to intimate. According to Lance Brunner, it’s about taking the things you want to do (but are less likely to do) and creating a space for them to become so familiar and rote that it becomes a seamless part of your life. In the way you might make a habit of running or knitting or knotting your tie. Since my experience at ALIA this past June, I’ve been hoping to recapture an intimacy and connectedness with community that extends beyond my family and circle of friends.

Last weekend my husband and I attended a weekend course on Shambhala meditation – a form of secular Buddhist practice. Our experience was just as our great instructor had predicted: frustrating, boring, difficult. Wow, you say. Sign me up! Yeah, well it was a distinct challenge to set aside thoughts of work, parenting and side projects to sit cross-legged for eight hours with your eyes open staring at an orange wall.

I won’t fib and say I was suddenly enlightened, or that I solved a major dilemma while sitting in silence. But there was a certain calm that came about after my monkey brain settled down. A calm I typically only experience in the three minutes I have to myself in the shower each morning before my daughter rips back the curtain and announces she’s pooped in my office.